Guido has long criticised the predictive methodology of Tweetminster – they take the number of tweets and based on the positive or negative sentiment of the tweets, predict the related outcome. When they predicted Labour would be the biggest party before the election Guido offered them a bet, they didn’t take him up on his offer.

Tweetminster predicted Esther Rantzen would win Luton South based on positive tweets for the fading celeb – the prediction garnered them a few headlines from gullible hacks. Despite masses of media coverage Esther polled a mere 1,872 votes and lost her deposit. Let us hear no more of the predictive ability of Twitter, it is snake-oil.

There is a long established mantra coined by George Fuechsel, an IBM engineer back in the days of mainframes, which was soon contracted to the acronym “GIGO” and can be applied here – Garbage In, Garbage Out.